Formatting - Ack!


RPG Superstar™ 2012 General Discussion

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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9

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Hi

Just wondering, when I was reviewing my entry for the umpteenth time, I noticed in the core rules book that in the construction entries, consistent use of underline on the entries found there for components of the construction.

So I looked at my entry and tried formatting it in the same way.

I tried [u]thing to underline[/u]

I based it on the formatting examples for bold and italic and hoped it was basic htmnl mark up for underline. However...

Only the underline was applied in preview, so to be sure I didnt naff up my entry with weird [u] beside some words, I removed that formatting.

Just thought it worth mentioning, we the contestants want to provide properly formatted entries but we cant do underline it seems.

Cheers all.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32 , Star Voter Season 7

A template containing the required formatting can be found in the round 1 rules.

Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 9

The underline is only in the PRD and the pdf, not in the physical book itself. if you look in the physical book; construction requirements are in italic, which is the format we're asked to use.


Ross Byers wrote:
A template containing the required formatting can be found in the round 1 rules.

Its easy enough to add italics, but Ross the italics were not in the format as presented for RPG superstar. At least at the time of announcement.

Under requirements formatted in bold it just says ZZspells with no italic commands around it. Was this in error?

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16 , Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7 aka primemover003

Carl Cascone wrote:
Ross Byers wrote:
A template containing the required formatting can be found in the round 1 rules.

Its easy enough to add italics, but Ross the italics were not in the format as presented for RPG superstar. At least at the time of announcement.

Under requirements formatted in bold it just says ZZspells with no italic commands around it. Was this in error?

It's not an error rather than an omission IMO... look at the core rule book and you wil see that there is a style to writing out things in magic item descriptions. Spells and the name of magic items when mentioned in descriptive text are always italicized.

Heck since last years competition I've taken to always italicizing spells and magic items names even in messageboard posts.

Monkey see, monkey do... The closer you stick to how things look in the books the more you look like a potential RPG Superstar.

--I wanna Vrock... VROCK!

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32, 2011 Top 4 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Marathon Voter Season 9 aka DankeSean

Carl Cascone wrote:
Ross Byers wrote:
A template containing the required formatting can be found in the round 1 rules.

Its easy enough to add italics, but Ross the italics were not in the format as presented for RPG superstar. At least at the time of announcement.

Under requirements formatted in bold it just says ZZspells with no italic commands around it. Was this in error?

You're right, they're not. I'm pretty sure that there's a reason for that, though:, the template isn't making any assumptions about how many spells you might use for requirements.

Proper item formatting is:

magic missile, polymorph other, shield

not:

magic missile, polymorph other, shield

In other words, each spell name gets its own individual italics tags, instead of creating one set of italics tags that encompasses all spells, plus the commas between then. It's a pretty subtle difference, but one the judges do make note of and comment on.

So, if the provided magic item template did include italics tags around ZZspells, that would be potentially misleading to someone who's just trying to follow the 'official' provided template, since then it would look like they're supposed to just include the one italics tag. Leaving it blank gives you the room to insert them yourself & do it properly. (Or make the error of not inserting them at all, but at some point there are things a contestant is supposed to be able to figure out on his own.)


Thanks, Sean. I think you've got it exactly right. Those that know will italicize spells in their Requirements section.

Contributor

Likewise, the template doesn't tell you to capitalize feats, but you should.

The template also doesn't tell you to spell the spell names correctly, but you should.

There's more to the competition than what's explicitly called out in the stat block format.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 , Dedicated Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9

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For formatting, if you aren't sure - check an example in a published product. There are some tricks (the all caps thing) but this will help in most circumstances.

For example if you don't remember off the top of your head if an item that has no weight is listed as:


— lbs.
— lb.

or something else, you can (and should) look it up.

(It's — by the way.)

Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 9

There's a lot of partial omissions in the template, because the template is for formatting only. For instance, as was brought up in another thread - it doesn't explicitly tell you to put commas in prices. Because, obviously ZZ is not a four-digit number. It's two letters. Likewise, the template doesn't explicitly tell you to italicize spells - because ZZ isn't a spell, it's two letters.

You're going to have to do your homework on this, and that's part of the challenge. You're going to have to do a lot more homework than just knowing how to format an item correctly. For instance, knowing what orginizations exist in Golarion, knowing what adventures have been already written, and so on. Homework is something they keep an eye on - after all, the judges don't want someone who suggests a group of bards based on The Harpers of Pern - because that already exists. They're called the Pathfinder Society.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9 aka motteditor

How does one do an em-dash on the message board? I've been using two hyphens (granted, I don't see anyone getting dinged for that in previous years, but I was just doing some review and saw Sean give props to someone for using proper em-dashes).

Star Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Marathon Voter Season 9

We worked on that in the practice thread,because I could not get an em dash stay an em dash when I posted to the boards. Best I can tell you is this.

Legendary Games, Necromancer Games

Carl Cascone wrote:

Under requirements formatted in bold it just says ZZspells with no italic commands around it. Was this in error?

Nope. We can't do everything for you. There are a lot of things the format doesnt provide that is actually required. That, too, is part of the test.

Again, as has been mentioned hundreds of times, a formatting mistake is not an auto-reject like over word count, but it is a ding against you. Enough dings and even the best idea ever would get cut. Strive to do it right and frankly doing it right is impressive. You'd think we'd get hundreds and hundreds of perfectly done formatted items, but we don't. It always makes Neil happy in particular to see perfect formatting. I'm a tad more forgiving.

But the bottom line is this: show us you are a superstar. If WE do it for you, you aren't showing us what YOU can do. We want to see what YOU can do. So show us you can do superstar item creation, superstar rules following, superstar formatting, etc.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32, 2012 Top 4 aka OamuTheMonk

Double checking to make sure I italicized spells now...

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9 aka motteditor

Clark, what percentage do you think ARE perfect (the formatting, that is)? Just curious.

Legendary Games, Necromancer Games

motteditor wrote:
Clark, what percentage do you think ARE perfect (the formatting, that is)? Just curious.

Hard to say. Formatting is one of the last things I really check in detail. It catches my eye right away if its a mess. But if formatting seems good, I note that and read the item. If the item gets rejected on its merits I may not check how perfect the formatting is. So there are lots that are rejected that have reasonable looking formatting but I can't tell you if it is perfect because once rejected I just dont spend the time to check if the rest of it is perfect.

But that said, I'll try to ballpark an answer for you like this: I would say no more than half of the items submitted even seem to be correctly formatted. Let alone perfect.

Either not using italics right or having the wrong things capitalized or not capitalized, etc. Ital and first lettter caps are probably the two biggest that I notice right away.

Formatting is a big strike but it's not fatal. Usually, though, a submission with formatting issues has other issues as well.

Legendary Games, Necromancer Games

The real question is the submission that is real close--almost perfect but a few glitches. There are LOTS of those. And that really is not fatal.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

motteditor wrote:
How does one do an em-dash on the message board? I've been using two hyphens (granted, I don't see anyone getting dinged for that in previous years, but I was just doing some review and saw Sean give props to someone for using proper em-dashes).

I have no idea how to type one on Windows. On a Mac, it's shift-option-hyphen.

Contributor , Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8

Vic Wertz wrote:
motteditor wrote:
How does one do an em-dash on the message board? I've been using two hyphens (granted, I don't see anyone getting dinged for that in previous years, but I was just doing some review and saw Sean give props to someone for using proper em-dashes).
I have no idea how to type one on Windows. On a Mac, it's shift-option-hyphen.

Alt+0151 (on the number pad).

The Exchange Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

If your item is *that awesome* where you think you can make it without formatting then maybe you can skip it... then again, there might be 32 other people who brought something that awesome to the show. You might be giving the judges something blatant to make your entry number 33. Things like formatting and pricing are secondary but can make a big difference if things get tight. As an entrant, your goal is to make it as difficult as possible for the judges to eliminate you.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9 aka motteditor

Wow, maybe it's my copy editor background, but 50 percent really surprises me. Guess I'm just keyed to focus in on details like formatting.

Here's another question: Is the space after a paragraph part of the style, or should there be an extra line via carriage returns? I feel like it'll be difficult to read the block of text if I don't put those lines in manually, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it's part of the style (like the all-caps) in a final product.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

Put the extra line in. The important thing is to make the preview of your item look as much like the final product as you can...within the limitations of the sumbission tool.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9 aka motteditor

Merci. That was what my instincts were telling me, but since we had this thread here, I figured I'd ask.


Clark Peterson wrote:
I would say no more than half of the items submitted even seem to be correctly formatted. Let alone perfect.

So, generally speaking, if we format our item perfectly, don't have a paragraph of flavour text including 'Bozo the Wizard', and aren't creating a Swiss Army Knife or something... that still doesn't mean we'll get into the Top 32, but at least we don't need to feel embarrassed about submitting a lemon that gets rejected without even being read and considered?

Because honestly, much as I would truly love to have the opportunity to design professionally for Paizo, this is my first year, and I need a lot more practice writing on this level, so that's really all I want. Something that, even if rejected, was seriously looked out and mulled over first. If I'm in the top 1000 or so (even though I'm sure no judge would actually say so), that would be more than good enough for my first year here, and encouraging enough to keep trying again.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32 , Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8 aka Isaac Duplechain

I think that they've said that the submissions number in the hundreds, and have also said that Top 32 is (at least) the top 5%; so just by submitting, you've made it into the Top 1000.


Isaac Duplechain wrote:
I think that they've said that the submissions number in the hundreds, and have also said that Top 32 is (at least) the top 5%; so just by submitting, you've made it into the Top 1000.

I'm just going off of Clark implying that people would be discouraged if they knew how many submissions get sent in. Personally, 1000 isn't nearly enough to discourage me. Maybe if it were ten times that number I might feel that was too many and I would get lost in the sea of entries... but I was guessing more like 2-3000 would be how many they get. I just want to be the top 50%.

Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 9

Last year, if I recall, they said they had just over a thousand entries by the end of the competition. Like, 1,300 or something.


RonarsCorruption wrote:
Last year, if I recall, they said they had just over a thousand entries by the end of the competition. Like, 1,300 or something.

Then that's far less competition than I was expecting there to be, and I shall instead hope to place in the top 320 of entries. *grin*


I just look at some of the wondrous items in the magic items section of the core rulebook (page 496-532) and try to copy them best I can.

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Golly Gosh. I only asked about Underlining.

But yeah, just like everyone else here, I was simply striving to get the exact formatting in all places (as I work from PDF or PRD, the underlining did throw me, so I was glad that was cleared up).

I actually think it's very heartening going over older threads and seeing so many of us wanting to do it right.

I believe not only does this show a good professionalism and attitude, it just might make the judges jobs that little bit more enjoyable too.

Thanks everyone.

Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 9

And, another note on the underlining - I recall last year one of the judges coming to the boards to comment on how one particular submission contained links directly to things like the construction requirements and the grappling rules - just like in the PRD itself.

Since it wasn't the expected (read: book) format, they weren't sure if it was a mistake, an attempt at pandering, or what.


If I made a mistake on the formatting on my submission, is there a way to go back and correct it before the round starts?

Paizo Employee Senior Software Developer

Once you submit your entry that's it. It's in the judges' hands.


...Crud :(

Dedicated Voter Season 6

:( spelling ...


Last year I recall some confusion over whether or not to include the item name in both the Name field and the Description field. (The answer is "yes, it goes in both") I've been away from the boards through the holidays so I'm not sure what the judges' feelings are on that this time around. Are they inclined to show mercy on someone who put the item name in the Title field only, or is this strong grounds for disqualification in 2012?

Contributor

It's not grounds for disqualification, but it is a sign of sloppiness. You should hit Preview to check your word count, and when you do so you'd see that your item's stat block does or doesn't include the item name.

Legendary Games, Necromancer Games

Anthony Adam wrote:
I believe not only does this show a good professionalism and attitude, it just might make the judges jobs that little bit more enjoyable too.

Not just more enjoyable, actually easier to do.

The better formatted an item is, the more we are able to focus on the item. Its easier for us to compare two equally well formatted items because that takes formatting errors out of the equation in comparing the items. So the closer we can get everyone to well formatted submissions the more it lets us focus just on the item.


Thanks for the clarification Sean. Now back to all the awesome Superstar threads I missed...

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

And, believe me...if you screw up anything on the presentation, I will notice (and probably make a comment about it).

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Neil is special you see. All the other judges, they have a big red vorpal reject button and a little white keep button. Neil has those as well, but he also has a secret "Robot Format Checker and Comment Generator" button too...

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 8

Neil Spicer wrote:
And, believe me...if you screw up anything on the presentation, I will notice (and probably make a comment about it).

Seems to me there is a quote out there along those lines... something to do with the devil and the details?

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16 , Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8

If at all possible without sounding like a total suckup, I'll happily admit that Neil's well documented attention to format detail made me work extra hard just in the hopes of scoring a "good to see a well formatted item" comment.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

I've given a few people those comments. It definitely improves my view of an item to see someone has that type of attention-to-detail. Because that tells me a lot more about the designer behind the item. And that's what we're really assessing in this round. We're not collecting a bunch of item submissions in an open call for a book of magic items. The actual item is far less relevant than what it tells us about the designer behind it and whether they deserve a shot at the Top 32. From there, it's anyone's game. But, you've got to convince us you're the one who deserves that opportunity. Your 300-word item submission is the only means by which you have to convince us. So, making it as neat and professional as you can definitely reflects well on you.

Scarab Sages Marathon Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7

I'll remember the non-italicized comma after the italicized spell next year, I hope my themed SAIC still wows them this year, they say three's a charm and it was, I almost got it with my ghostfire torch but I didn't mangle the costs enough based upon my tweaking of the rules...according to the pricing guidelines it was dead on, but its effect was more than that. So hopefully FIVE'S a charm this year...if not maybe 2x3= three's a double charm.

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Xaaon of Korvosa wrote:
I'll remember the non-italicized comma after the italicized spell next year, I hope my themed SAIC still wows them this year, they say three's a charm and it was, I almost got it with my ghostfire torch but I didn't mangle the costs enough based upon my tweaking of the rules...according to the pricing guidelines it was dead on, but its effect was more than that. So hopefully FIVE'S a charm this year...if not maybe 2x3= three's a double charm.

I know what you mean.

I actually started looking into coding a c# app that generated the formatting and allowed cost calculations to be semi-auto calculated as a start point.

Then I decided my good old fingers and toes would get me through another year and were more reliable than my coding skills >.<

Legendary Games, Necromancer Games

Neil Spicer wrote:
I've given a few people those comments. It definitely improves my view of an item to see someone has that type of attention-to-detail. Because that tells me a lot more about the designer behind the item. And that's what we're really assessing in this round. We're not collecting a bunch of item submissions in an open call for a book of magic items. The actual item is far less relevant than what it tells us about the designer behind it and whether they deserve a shot at the Top 32. From there, it's anyone's game. But, you've got to convince us you're the one who deserves that opportunity. Your 300-word item submission is the only means by which you have to convince us. So, making it as neat and professional as you can definitely reflects well on you.

See, there is Neil summarizing my favorite observation about round 1: we are not actually trying to compile a book of wondrous items. The GOAL is to find 32 awesome potential freelancers to compete in the contest. The TASK we use to achieve that goal is to have everyone design a wondrous item. You can't get lost on the task and forget about the actual goal which is why a submission with creativity and innovation and inspiration but a few technical flaws wins over a technically perfect submission with less inspiration and creativity.

Liberty's Edge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012 , Star Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9

Clark Peterson wrote:
Neil Spicer wrote:
I've given a few people those comments. It definitely improves my view of an item to see someone has that type of attention-to-detail. Because that tells me a lot more about the designer behind the item. And that's what we're really assessing in this round. We're not collecting a bunch of item submissions in an open call for a book of magic items. The actual item is far less relevant than what it tells us about the designer behind it and whether they deserve a shot at the Top 32. From there, it's anyone's game. But, you've got to convince us you're the one who deserves that opportunity. Your 300-word item submission is the only means by which you have to convince us. So, making it as neat and professional as you can definitely reflects well on you.
See, there is Neil summarizing my favorite observation about round 1: we are not actually trying to compile a book of wondrous items. The GOAL is to find 32 awesome potential freelancers to compete in the contest. The TASK we use to achieve that goal is to have everyone design a wondrous item. You can't get lost on the task and forget about the actual goal which is why a submission with creativity and innovation and inspiration but a few technical flaws wins over a technically perfect submission with less inspiration and creativity.

Summarizing? ;)

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Clark Peterson wrote:
...a submission with creativity and innovation and inspiration but a few technical flaws wins...

Yeah.

You can go home now ladies and gents.

Clark has described my entry perfectly...

Honest,

S'Truth,

Really!

OK OK

I can dream...

aspire...

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